The Scientist
by Chash
Summary: Oh, take me back to the start (Hitomi and Merle POV, not a song fic).
1. Hitomi

Title: The Scientist

Author: Chash

Fandom: Escaflowne

Pairings: Van/Hitomi, Merle/Van (one-sided)

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Rating: PG

Summary: Take me back to the start

"Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be this hard."

-Coldplay, "The Scientist"

She never thought it would be difficult to return, not even quite when she realized she would be leaving Van. Even if she had friends in Gaia, she had friends at home too, crowds of girls who wanted tarot readings, Yukari, her mother, the girl who sat next to her in math class who gave her little treats sometimes, saying she was too thin. Always she had friends, well-wishers, acquaintances, and people only using her for her powers of prediction— just like in Gaia, except that in Gaia she had enemies too, so she had assumed she'd be happy going back except for Van.

Van had no match up in the real world, not that anyone works out exactly right, except for Allen and Amano, which was the problem. Van should have been Amano, but instead Allen was because Van was too important.

She thought it would be all right to only see him sometimes, but she finds herself as lost in her own world as she used to be in Gaia, as unsure of what to do and where she was as when she was, it seems, so much younger, and wondering why there were girls with cat ears and hulking wolfmen.

What she would not give to see Merle again—any of them again. Even when she sees Van, it doesn't help, because she wants the kind of seeing that isn't seeing at all, it's taking, running her fingers over something, examining it, like people do when they ask to "see" her tarot cards. It's not about seeing, it's about interaction, and she cannot interact with Van.

Gaia seems familiar, as if it is a home she lost, which it should not be. She should be content, returned to Earth, the Mystic Moon, whatever name she chooses, and she can never choose. She should have been overjoyed to be home. But she doesn't think she's home after all.

Amano writes them letters, the team, and Yukari, and Hitomi herself, and she finds herself longing for such a simple contact with Gaia and Fanelia. She wants to write Van letters: Van Fanel, Fanelia Castle, Fanelia, Gaia. Everyone thinks she's crazy enough without adding letters to an imaginary boy from an imaginary country on an imaginary moon.

It hits her sharply while she is doing college applications that she does not actually want to go to any of them, that she does not want to go anywhere except home. And by home, she means Fanelia, just like she always should have. She wonders if it can really be so simple as a matter of wishing. She doesn't know how to go back. She doesn't know if she can.

She takes to writing it on everything, on papers and in the fog of windows, so that when Van appears, he might see. But she forgets he can't understand Japanese, and her words mean nothing to him, he only smiles, but it never reaches his eyes.

She wishes to go back so strongly that she hurts her eyes when she squeezes them shut. She thinks, foolishly, if she murmurs it under her breath enough, someone will hear. She doesn't want to stay here on this now strange world where she is always safe and there is no Van.

It takes her a long time to realize that the main factor is Van, that it is he she is having trouble forgetting. When she sees something interesting, she wants to tell him. She could survive anywhere, if he were there.

It sounds pathetic to her, the dependence she has on a boy she cannot see anymore. But she loves him.

So she will go back. She knows it with the surety of the sunrise. She knows that she loves Van, and because of this love, she will go back to him.

She closes her eyes and wishes until tears come out, but it doesn't work. It's all right. She can wait.


	2. Merle

See part one for details

To say she never thought she'd marry Van would be a lie on every level. She spent most of her youth convinced of it, took it for granted until she was ten, when she realized they were not the same, that he had wings and she had stripes, and these things were not done. Still, even until Hitomi came, she thought she might marry Van. She thought she loved him enough that it didn't matter about any of that. Something about true love overcoming all bounds, some romantic notion.

She was wrong, but not because love doesn't overcome everything. She was wrong because he doesn't love her.

It hurts even now to think the words, and she's never been able to say them at all.

She thinks she is still young, and she thinks, sometimes, that maybe, he will love her, not Hitomi, but she knows it is a silly notion she has.

She is not young enough to deceive herself anymore. She wishes she were.

Van does not eat as much as he should, and when he stretches, she can see his ribs, prominently. She asks him why he let Hitomi leave and he never answers her. She is the only one allowed to ask such questions of the king, though, and it gives her a small comfort.

When they tell him he must marry, he shrugs. When they insist, he says he will marry her, if he must marry someone.

A part of her heart dies and another part breaks free. She kicks him in the shin and tells him she won't marry him. He finds her crying in the tower and apologizes, running his hand through his black hair.

Everything would be so much easier if she could stop loving him or start hating Hitomi, or both, or neither, or everything.

She doesn't think there's really a way to make it easier, but she is still young, and still allowed to lie to herself.

Hitomi will come back. Hitomi must come back.

When they are together, everything is better, because she can see in front of her why she is giving him up. When he looks so sad, there is nothing she can do.

All she can do is wait.


End file.
